#trailbuilders

En este estupendo video que te dejo el constructor de senderos o “trailbuilder” Greg Jolliffe cuenta como lleva a cabo su trabajo, en qué piensa cuando diseña uno de sus senderos, auténticas obras de arte. La pasión y elevada atención al detalle de sus trabajos demuestran que el arte está en todas partes, porque construir un sendero como los de las fotos y el video requiere un toque que no todos…

After 2 weeks with the short-term volunteers in Skaftafell, I spent my last 3 weeks in Iceland with the Blue team. A pretty diverse team, with the Italian Teo, Scottish Laura, English Max and Latvian Ekaterina. And for that first week I wasn’t just working with them; also Julie, Kerry (one of the short term volunteers) and Hannah (last year’s Purple team) joined us for some work a little drive away from Höfn. We had a nice and easy drive over there from Skaftafell that Sunday, and as soon as we set up our camp, we headed over to the pool where we would spend many hours that week – especially on the slides.

On Monday, we drove to our worksite at Skálafellsjökull, where you can go on a nice 1 hour-walk that loops around to the glacier and back. We split the team up here, where a third of the group continued with the gravelling that Red Team had started earlier on in summer, and the others started building 2 sets of stone stairs. Where Julie and her team seemed to work pretty well with some nice and manageable rocks, somehow my team ended up with massive monsters again. Loads of grunting and trembling muscles both that day and the following, so it was perfect to be able to soak in a hot hottub every evening. There were also a few nice glacier tongues and lakes to see, so we took both our truck and our Skoda over some bumpy roads to get there – one guess which one of the two cars wasn’t optimal for that kind of use..

Afraid that we would run out of rocks and out of working spines, I asked the ranger if we couldn’t build some boardwalks over the boggy parts of the trail, and luckily she was alright with that. Actually, she seemed more than alright with that; we had just finished a small first boardwalk from scrapwood when she called to say that a huge load of wood was headed our way. The local farmer brought the wood pretty close to us, so we only had to carry over all those planks and beams for the last couple of hundred meters. Now we knew the measurements of our stringers for the boardwalks, we started hammering away on some frames before heading back to Höfn.

That evening, after our daily hottub-soak, Elvar arrived who would join us for a day of trailbuilding. Using the fact that he has a truck that also could handle all the bumps, we drove over an even longer dirtroad to yet another glacier lagoon. Thursday was a day of high-speed building, divided up in 3 teams. Whilst one team was cutting into the dirt to be able to fit the structure in, another team was cutting wood whilst the last team was putting together another woodframe. During lunch, we had yet another visitor that day, when my friend Marianne and her parents and sister rocked up to our worksite. So fun to finally see someone from back home in Iceland, and to be able to show our work – even though our work at that time was munching away our massive sandwiches. After they had left again, we continued digging in the strangely fibrous mud, doing loads of measuring and fitting in the frames. Eventually we had put in 3 connecting frames plus another separate frame, all put firmly into place with the stobs that one of our “sub-teams” had made. Only the slats had to go on now, but we left that for the next day and decided to explore the rest of the hiking trail instead. The walk is definitely worth it if you are ever in the area, especially because it is very diverse. It is a steep walk up towards a canyon, after which there is a very bumpy and barren landscape that will make you feel like you’re on the moon, through which the trail leads you towards the glacier lagoon. After that, you follow the banks of a broad river through a mossy landscape, followed by some kilometers where you walk high above the river before getting back to the intersection where we were working.

  On Friday we had to say goodbye to Elvar, but nonetheless we had a great day where we had a woodcutting team, whilst the others were hammering nails into slats like there was no tomorrow (as Teo would say). We all worked together as a well-oiled boardwalk-creating machine, and we even took the gamble of starting to work from both ends of our long boardwalk. We were just the luckiest puffins in Iceland when all slats ended up fitting perfectly, with 2 ramps connecting the three frames making up for our long boardwalk. With those ramps, we made a structure with a nice gentle curve, following the slight downhill grade of the trail. Needless to say I have never been more proud of a boardwalk any of my teams have made (yes, I know that is a little dramatic, but it was just so pretty!).

That afternoon, when we were just finishing up, our final visitor of the week arrived – Siggi! He stayed over for a pancake dinner and pitched his tent in our camp. We had a great time on our last night as such a big trail team. The next morning, Kerry and Julie had to leave early to get on their bus back to Skaftafell, Siggi had to head back in that direction as well and Hannah was picking up Red Team to get them to their new location. The Blue team and I drove even further East to set up camp in Egilsstadir for a night before diving into the highlands!

 Max moving one of our smaller rocks of the day.. 

Hannah and her trail-widening work

Team down..

Getting them beams over to site

ICV efficiency!

On our evening hike

Working that strange dirt to get our frames in

Hit it Teo!

Long-distance cairn destruction

Icelandic version of “walk like an egyptian”

Bourbon-fuel!